The Progressive Zionist

Sunday, January 18, 2015

On September 11, 2001 I watched the first plane hit the World Trade Center from the street. Several hours later I participated in a panicked, thronged, exodus from Manhattan.

As soon as the smoke cleared I reached a conclusion about what the biggest geo-political threat resulting from this momentous day would be: The biggest threat was going to be, I thought, American and Western military over-reach and aggression.

As I surveyed the landscape of American flags covering every possible surface in those days of immediate aftermath, there was little chance, in my reckoning, that the that this new, extreme, senseless form of terrorism would not be taken seriously enough. Rather, my primary fear was that it would be taken too seriously.

So I frantically sent out e-mails warning the recipients to be careful of American military interventions. I monitored the news for evidence of a large-scale backlash against Muslims which, with a few notable exceptions, to my surprise, didn't happen.

Well, was I correct when I looked to the future and saw the nightmare of over-reaction? Was I right about the nightmare of a society too obsessed with the danger of Islamic terrorism, and too quick to react based on that obsession?

No. I was wrong.

Other people were right and I was wrong, and if you were one of those people who was right, I apologize to you here and now.

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No. to my surprise, but perhaps not to the surprise of people who were wiser than me in 2001, what I feared then is not what turned out to happen. Instead, the opposite of what I feared then is what turned out to happen.

The 9/11 attacks have been followed up with a litany of Islamist terrorist incidents and atrocities, large and small, to which Western society's reaction has not been increasing vigilance but rather increasing apathy and equivocation.

That very abbreviated list was, as I said, only a selection of the atrocities served to Western and non-Muslim majority countries since 9/11. Even beyond a comprehensive list of that violence, the full tally of Islamist violence would have to include the slaughters and tortures visited upon their brethren in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia by ISIS, AQAP, AQIM, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, the Taliban, and countless other groups. It would also have to include the daily drumbeat of chaos brought to Israel, where, proportionally to their population, they suffer a 9/11 every year.

It turns out that in the face of the mangled bodies and mangled vehicles, in the United States, in Canada, in Europe, in Australia, in India, and in Africa, the response of the West has been to cede more ground, to give up more of its hard-earned religious freedom and openness, which each successive attack.

As the 2000s became the 2010s and to the present, each attack carried out and each plot uncovered has been met with less and less discussion of the senseless violence and what can be done about it, and more and more discussion of how the attacks are not the atrocities they appear to be, how we are responsible, and how that supposed responsibility precludes action.

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In the aftermath of 9/11 some people with whom I was acquainted viewed those attacks as unfortunate, but ultimately understandable, blowback for American imperialism. This unsettled me because how can this be the case when the attackers are themselves imperialists, who have a stated goal to dominate the world or a large part of it? On Al Qaeda's published list of grievances against the West was that we supported the independence of East Timor against the imperialism of Indonesia.
While the impossibility of equating arch-imperialist Islamists with anti-imperialists bothered me then, I had no idea of the trends to come.

For what was then confined to the realm of extremists has since become a standard presence in the mainstream discourse:

Today we have the largest circulation newspapers in the West telling us that making fun of a religion or ideology in ink is the same as incitements to violence and Holocaust denial.

Today we have feminists telling us that burqas mean freedom, people of African descent rushing to embrace the religion of the people who started the African slave trade and still practice it, and human rights commissioners of major American cities comparing Iran favorably to America on LGBT issues.

Today we have the largest internet forums proclaiming that we must understand the grievances of terrorists. But only Islamist terrorists, for these sites would never dream of claiming that one must understand the grievances of any other terrorists.

Today we have pundits at our largest news outlets telling us that the Charlie Hebdo massacre must be understood in the context that the assassins were radicalized by the Iraq war. Never mind that France did not participate in the Iraq war - remember Freedom Fries.

Today we have many people who appear in mainstream programs telling us that to oppose Islamism as an ideology is just as bad as white supremacy or calling for the extermination of an ethnicity.

Today we have, while the Jewish dead in the Kosher supermarket are still smoldering, a BBC reporter berating a grieving woman on live TV about what other Jews are supposedly doing to Arabs a thousand miles away.

Today we have people saying that because of the perceived relatively low death toll of terrorism, efforts to combat terrorism are wasteful and immoral. The same logic would mean that because of our modern relatively low death toll from contaminated water and contaminated medicine, the efforts we expend to treat the water and regulate pharmaceuticals are wasteful.

Today people who occupy central positions in the culture tell us that these Islamist atrocities are not Islamist atrocities at all, but rather outlandish conspiracies of our own governments.

Worst of all, the terrorists have literally won in achieving their major objective: the Western media has surrendered by agreeing not to do anything that the terrorists dislike. And not only have they acquiesced, they have done so pathetically, and they lie about the reason.

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There you have it. I was wrong back then. The biggest threat was not that we would over-react to terrorism. It turned out that we would seriously under-react to terrorism, and begin the process of equivocating about it, and therefore ultimately surrendering to it.

If I had seen the following BBC program on September 13, 2001, perhaps I would have had more insight into the brave new world which was to come. Here, just two days after 9/11, while bodies were still being pulled out of the wreckage, the audience brings the still shocked American Ambassador to tears with all of the above and then some, delivered in the crudest manner. I would like to think that had I seen this then, I would have been wiser. I will never know.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

By now everyone is probably aware of the terrible genocide currently being committed against that proud ancient brown indigenous people in the Middle East. You know, the people who have been colonized and occupied for years?

Picture from the genocide in question

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Oh wait, you thought I was talking about the Palestinians? You must be incredibly stupid!

First of all, the "Palestinian" territories have the highest rate of natural population increase in the world. In the world! That is the opposite of a genocide. For something to be a genocide, the population of the supposed target group has to at least stop going up at the highest rate in the world. Plus there is all that stuff about thousands of rockets being fired from schools and hospitals and so on. There is also that little matter that the Palestinians are not ancient at all.

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No, I am talking about the genocide of the Yezidis. See, even though you don't know about it, because the media seems to be silent, right now the Yezidi people, who practice a unique religion that predates Islam and speak Kurdish, are being killed and expelled from the last of their homeland in Iraq. A larger fraction of Yezidis have died and been displaced than Palestinians lately, but for some reason hardly anyone knows about the Yezidis. Hmm, very "interesting".

Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst.

Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children.

Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of the harsh conditions in shallow graves, their bodies covered with stones.

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The Yezidis are not the only current victims of genocide that you've never heard of.

The Assyrian people are even more ancient, the descendents of the Sumerian civilization. Historically they were spread across Iraq and formed around 8% of the Iraqi population in the late 20th century. As Christians they have been an especially vulnerable target of Islamic militants. Between 2003 and 2009 one million Assyrians - two-thirds of the total population - were driven from Iraq. The rump that has remained has now been targeted by ISIS, who have issued convert or die orders to the remaining Assyrian community in Mosul.

But wait, there's more! Have you heard of the Mandaeans? I didn't think so. They are another ancient minority in Iraq. The Mandeans practice a religion that fuses Christianity with Gnostic philosophy. In the past 20 years, due to persecutions, murders, and expulsions, their population in Iraq has gone from 60,000 to around 5,000 today. A reduction of 92%? Now that is a genocide.

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So why is it that all of these groups, who are each more ancient than the Palestinians, and who are actually losing numbers and actually in danger of extinction in their homelands whereas the Palestinians are not, are getting only the tiniest fraction of the amount of concern that the Palestinians are??

Why is it that there are thousands of editorials over the Palestinians but zero for the Yezidis, who are actually going extinct??

Why are there hundreds of articles at HuffPo and Daily Kos about the Palestinians but none for the Assyrians, who are going to actually disappear from their five thousand year homeland??

Why have their been dozens of protests worldwide about the Palestinians whose population goes up every single day but none for the Mandaeans who have declined by 92%??

One of those "human rights" activists who supports Palestinians and definitely doesn't have any other motivation

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Well, we all know the answer.

It is because Palestinians are involved in a conflict with Jews, and the rest are not. When Jews can be somehow blamed, the world perks up and takes note. The rest of these groups are S.O.L., because even though they are actually going extinct in the Middle East due to the genocidal activities of their neighbors, nobody cares for or has even heard about them, because their situation cannot be blamed on Israel.

This proves that people who are supposedly concerned with "Palestinians" are really just haters of Jews. If they were really concerned about human rights and oppressed peoples, they would devote at least a fraction of their concern to the Yezidis, Assyrians, and Mandaeans.

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This is why I must conclude that all Western pro-Palestinian activists are solely motivated by pure antisemitism, and/or pure hatred of America and the West. Full stop. They simply don't care one bit about human rights or actual people, or else they would have at least heard of these other groups. They only care about people if they can be a means to bash America, Israel, or the West.

So let me say it again:

So-called pro-Palestinian activists only care about people if they can be a means to bash America, Israel, or the West.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

If you are a person who, like me, is appalled by anti-Israel idiocy, both of the left and the right, then this video clip will make your day, possibly your year:

For those who are not familiar with it, Real Time With Bill Maher is one of the touchstones of American liberal culture.

In this episode Maher, along with Liberal Congresswoman Jane Harmon and conservative pundit Jamie Weinstein, spend five minutes bashing Hamas and praising Israel! They make it perfectly clear who is to blame for the violence.

Not only that, they manage to hit so many of the salient points that are tragically taboo in American and Western discourse about the Israeli-Arab conflict, including the one million Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab countries, Hamas' genocidal charter, and the cultural reasons that Arab society is backward and cannot accept peace.

It is absolutely amazing to see this discussion on American television. Moreso, this clip, because it has both liberal and conservative figures on it - agreeing - should be forwarded to everyone's liberal and conservative friends. It simply cannot be dismissed as "oh just those (liberal/conservative) partisans".

And I have saved the best for last... Throughout this clip Maher's audience constantly cheers the points made! That's right, those extreme LA liberals are cheering over and over the defense of Israel and the bashing of Hamas AND the whole anti-Israel position.

I'm just beside myself. It is the perfect anecdote to the hateful, ignorant, idiocy being belched all over the internet by deluded Israel haters. I think I'll watch it again.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

When I was growing up, in school we spent a lot of time in history class learning about the horrors of racism in the US, and in particular slavery. This was understandable as it is a huge part of American history, and also considering that the school district was majority black.

But it is interesting to note that even though we covered the Middle Passage and Harriet Tubman and Uncle Tom's Cabin year after year, we never once learned in class which culture actually started the African slave trade. Nor did we learn that even today, there are hundreds of thousands of black Africans still enslaved by members of that same certain culture. These are things I had to seek out on my own. Hmmm....

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There has actually been a lot of accounting for some of the atrocities that have transpired in the world in recent centuries. Germany has admirably led the way by taking full responsibility for the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, by compensating the victims and zealously stamping out any symbols of that era. The Western European colonial powers have largely recognized the injustices of their colonial empires. America is aware of its shameful past of slavery, racism, and theft from Native Americans, and there is even discussion of financial reparations. America has apologized and compensated victims of the WW2 era Japanese internment. Japan has officially apologized for its use of foreign 'comfort women' in that same era.

Even when apologies, recognition, and reparations have not yet happened, there has often been a widespread movement to keep memories of the atrocities alive. For instance people still fight for recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the Holodomor Famine, and the Rape of Nanking.

Now let's take a minute to realize the crucial point that there is, just to take one case from the list above, absolutely nothing anti-German or "racist against Germans" or "Germanophobic" in seeking to have Germany take responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era. Keep this in mind.

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There is a litany of horrors perpetrated in recent centuries by one particular group that is almost completely unknown in the West, even among educated and informed people. That group is Arabs. The horrors include:

(It should be mentioned that the later was not nearly universal in the Arab world, but for reference neither was German support for the Nazi regime, and yet Germany took responsibility as a whole.)

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So, here we have an undeniable litany of horrors perpetrated by Muslim Arabs, any one of which would be widely acknowledged if it was perpetrated by a Western country. And yet from the Arab world we have heard no hint of responsibility, no hint even of recognition.

In fact the Arab world has gone to great lengths of obfuscate and deny these events. In the recent UN Conference on Racism (known as Durban III) the Arab and Muslim countries sponsored a resolution condemning the "Trans-Atlantic" slave trade, the text of which completely omitted the Arab and Muslim role in it and other slave systems of the time.

It is high time that the Arab world be held to account for these horrible injustices and crimes against humanity, just as Germany has been held to account for the Nazis, the Western powers have been held to account for Colonialism, Japan has been held to account for some WW2 atrocities, and so on.

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The Arab world is uniquely positioned to recognize and pay reparations for these atrocities.

- The coffers of the Gulf oil monarchies are overflowing with cash which could be used for monetary reparations for victims of the African slave trade, and the Assyrian and Mandean genocides.

- Given that European colonialism lasted for around 25 to 50 years in the Middle East (longer in Algeria, obviously), the Arab world should consider it a good deal if they and Europe could call it even when both the Barbaray slave trade and European colonialism are considered.

And finally

- Most of the Jewish victims of Arab ethnic cleansing ended up in Israel, so acceptable reparations for the ethnic cleansing of Jews and the launching of the 1948 war of genocidal intent could be 1) immediate recognition of Israel and 2) the dropping of all claims to compensation or any territory West of the Jordan River.

Monday, June 16, 2014

I am giving up PZ. My friend fizziks is going to take over the name and run the blog.

I simply don't have the time or the will to do this anymore. For me it is a fairly useless exercise. Of course that doesn't mean I won't be posting (if fiz lets me) and I will definitely be commenting but I am suffering from a bit of burn out here.

Honestly, I was accomplishing absolutely nothing writing here. Nada, Zero. I am not Israeli and as much as I love and care about the country, I am almost certainly not making Aliyah. I love the United States, a nation that took my family in from Russia and Romania when Jews that were in those nations didn't get many breaks. My father was an officer in the U.S. Army and served during WWII (I was born when he was older). So really if I am going to be political (and I am) I need to focus my writing on issues here at home about things I care about, issues like Global Warming, Gun Control, Healthcare, and frankly doing my part to get Democratic, and Liberal politicians elected (I really like Elizabeth Warren, and pretty much there is no Republican out there who can get my vote given how insane that party has gotten).

Do I still care about Israel? Very much. Do I still care about Israel on-line advocacy... to a degree. Frankly, there is no one out there that really represents what I would like to see as a result. AIPAC is too much to the Right for me, and J Street really has simply become a mouthpiece for anti-Semites and anti-Zionists despite their repeated claims to the contrary. I thought they were the "good guys" because I like their platform, but, since they don't live up to their platform with their deeds and allow anti-Semites and anti-Zionists a platform to speak... I am not interested in being part of their movement.

All that said, I am simply tired of the extremes (both Left and Right) taking over the arguments on line when really no one except the whacked out fringes of the political spectrum are posting. The Right Wing simply lies and continues to post those lies as if they were fact hoping that somehow by saying something enough it will turn into a truth. These people have no interest in offering up any solutions, it is all just "I hate the Left and President Obama so much...." Just another healthy dose of Obama Derangement Syndrome and a refusal to offer a solution or even present a factual argument.

As for the Hard Left.... That is all just "We Hate America and Love Teh Irans". These fools just spend all day slobbering over anyone who goes after the U.S. and the West (by extension Israel) no matter how fucked up they may be. They too offer no solutions and when presented with evidence of their brazen hypocrisy, they simply dismiss it.

In a nutshell, the Rightists are deranged liars, and the Hard Leftists are deranged hypocrites. It boggles the mind and it is a fairly toxic mixture to deal with on a day to day basis.

SO rather than continue this charade I am done. Instead of writing article after article which sometimes get read and sometimes not, I am going to focus on real life stuff like working on my Krav Maga (currently going P-5 to G-1), and getting good at Tactical Shooting. I only have so many years left for this kind of physical activity so it becomes a priority over the "blah, blah, blah of the internet".

Anyway, for friends of this blog... Thanks for being part of it. I hope we can comment here together under fizziks banner. Your comments and articles were greatly appreciated even if we disagreed. I think that we showed that there can be fact based discussions on both sides of any issue and that if people stuck to facts they could have productive discourse.

For my opponents out there - it really is too bad that you were too fucking stupid to read anything that we wrote here, because honestly you might have learned something and you would have been challenged to face up to your ideas. But c'est la vie... you couldn't be bothered. So keep on keepin' on with your deranged hate or hypocrisy... You do know that most people are not paying attention to you, right?

So peace all... and tomorrow when you see this it will be fizziks blog.

The LA Times
today reports on demands made by student activists that candidates for
student government sign a pledge to not take part in sponsored trips to
Israel.

Activists succeeded in pressuring 17 of 30 candidates to sign the
pledge to refuse trips sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, the Anti-Defamation League or Hasbara Fellowships.
One student candidate said "It seemed unnecessary," Singh said,
adding: "We spent a lot of time talking about what we thought about
Israel." He added that he had gone on a ADL sponsored trip as a history
and economics major so he could "see the region with my own eyes."

The administration at UCLA is concerned about the activists pressure
to limit discussion and the lingering effects of the effort.

Chancellor Gene Block sent an email to the campus Friday,
saying he was disturbed by the events in the campaign. He asked for more
tolerance and said administrators would try to find ways to avoid
similar instances in the future.

"I am troubled that the pledge sought to delegitimize educational
trips offered by some organizations but not others," he said. "I am
troubled that the pledge can reasonably be seen as trying to eliminate
selected viewpoints from the discussion."

UC President Janet Napolitano also weighed in, saying she shared
Block's concerns. "The principles of civility, respect, and inclusion
... should also govern our campuses," she said. "The actions of these
students at UCLA violate these principles."

ONE SIDE NOTE TO COMMENTARY HERE (from volleyboy)

This all comes on the heels of the BDS Movement getting absolutely tarred in a meeting trying to get UCLA to follow the anti-Semitic Israeli Jews only Boycott proposed by the movement and now is getting hammered by the UCLA Administration. As reported here:

Fortunately, SJP’s campaign of hatred and intimidation has sparked major
backlash on campus. The Jewish student government candidate who was
slandered won by a comfortable margin. Pro-Israel students published a
statement condemning SJP’s hate speech and discrimination, calling for
action by the UCLA student government and administration. As of press
time, the statement had been signed by over 1,850 members of the UCLA
community (to sign, click here).
In response to public outcries, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and UC
President Janet Napolitano have released public statements condemning
SJP’s actions. The battle over Israel’s legitimacy on campus will likely
continue for years to come, but it is now clear that UCLA’s Jewish and
pro-Israel student community will no longer allow SJP’s bigotry to go
unchallenged.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Yep... You will probably never see those words again from me, a
committed Democrat and strong supporter of President Obama. BUT when
people do things that you like or respect it is really important that no
matter what side of the aisle they sit on I believe they should get due
praise when they do something right and due criticism when they are
wrong. In this case, I believe that a note of thanks is in order for
Governor Christie.
Now... this "thank you"
does not come easy to me. There are many things that I simply don't
like about the Governor (though I do respect him for casting aside
partisanship during Hurricane Sandy). That said... I have to appreciate
the following about him.
I noticed this headline on the Right Wing "news site" NewsMax (sorry, it's hard to call what they do "news").

No Mention of Israel in Christie's Jewish Gala Speech

Now ... why is this something I appreciate about Chris Christie?

Well....
one of the things that anti-Semites like to claim is that Jews are More
loyal to Israel (or "their own kind" as anti-Semites like to claim)
than their own country. This has been a canard since the beginning of
time and it has been used by various regimes to pass measures against
their own Jewish communities claiming that Jews are disloyal citizens
and "enemies of the State".

Strangely
enough the American Right Wing has also taken on this lie and made it
their own. Not only that but even Hard Rightist Jews constantly argue
that people should vote for Republicans because they feel President
Obama is bad for Israel.... and then they go on to bemoan conservative
politics both in the U.S. and Middle East.

Didn't the Republicans use this commercial in
Florida (without PM Netanyahu's permission) to get American Jews to
vote for them over President Obama? Where they feature Israeli PM
Netanyahu as an argument against Iran's nuclear program. Now... why use
the Israeli PM to sway Jewish Voters? What? An American voice would not
be good enough? Are they implying that Jewish voters wouldn't listen to
an American security expert on Iran?

I
find this disturbing to say the least. SO... when I see a Right Wing
Headline attacking Chris Christie over that fact that all he did was
talk about American priorities and NOT Israel that actually strikes me
as complimentary towards Christie.

I
mean here is Christie speaking to Jews and treating them like Americans
(which everyone should). And here is what NewsMax reported said:

Christie,
along with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, shared a table with Adelson on Sunday
night. While the New Jersey governor did not mention Israel
specifically in his address, he did address another topic Adelson
champions — an aggressive American foreign policy that defends American
values overseas.

"No one understands any longer who America
stands with or against," Christie said, according to BuzzFeed. "It's not
good enough to say that we tried. We must succeed."

Christie
also slammed Obama for not enforcing his self-drawn "red line," when he
declared there would be retribution for the use of chemical weapons in
Syria.

"It is time, in every respect, whether it’s our national
debt or an out-of-control entitlement system, our unreformed tax
system, or our failure to set a strong clear [message] or more
importantly a strong clear action on behalf of our friends around the
world," Christie said. "It’s time for our leaders to stop singing a
happy tune to the American people about the condition of our country. It
is time for us to tell the truth about that condition."

Now
while I may very much disagree with Gov. Christie about what he said, I
think it is very important that what he did here was address the
American community with American issues. Not Israeli issues, not
particularly Jewish issues, but with American issues.

See
this is the thing.... American Jews complain about anti-Semitism (and
we should) coming from attacks from the Left. While we don't vote with
the Right, certainly the constant drumbeat and obnoxiously loud
commentary from so called Human Rights Activists has driven a number of
Jewish Americans away from the Liberal / Progressive side of the aisle.

But
that said the Right is offering nothing more than the re-hashed "dual
loyalty" canard, and what is even sadder is that some Jewish Americans
have accepted that narrative and taken it on for themselves. Lately
Rightward leaning Jewish commentators on the web have all been calling
themselves "Liberals" but here at home they vote with the Republican
Party, a party which stands against almost
everything they believe for their country. And why do they do that..
because they don't like President Obama's stand on Israel. Period. They
claim they don't agree with the Republicans on anything else.. yet....
they vote for the Republicans anyway.

And
here is "the rub".... They expect that every other Jew will feel the
same way, and if they don't they are somehow less Jewish. But isn't that
what anti-Semites from Rome, to the Islamic Caliphates, to the Spanish
Inquistion, to the Czarist Russians, to Hitler and Stalin have argued.
That Jews only vote for their own interests and not for the interests of
the nation where they live. The nation of which they are citizens.

THAT
is the heart of anti-Semitism. Not some BDS Supporting lunatics who
have a small (but admittedly growing) presence in both American
political parties. No.... it is those in the establishment and on the
Right that say: "Don't vote for your domestic values. Who cares if the
Republicans want to eliminate abortion or choice in marriage or measures
for gender equality. Who cares that they deny man made global climate
change, or oppose Americans having healthcare. Vote for us because the
Republicans are better for Israel (a concept that I reject), and that
should be your priority".

SO
when I see Governor Christie stand up and NOT address the issue of
Israel, but actually talk about what affects Jews as Americans.. I say:
"Thank You" because he, unlike the rest of his party and the Right Wing
in general seems to be treating American Jews as Americans and NOT as
others when in our society. I may not agree with Christie on his
policies (and I don't), but I give him credit for standing above the
prejudice that affects the Right in general and even affects a minority
of Right Wing Jews.